


your heaven's trying everything (to break me down)

by bittereternity



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Joan-Centric, Pre-Series, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittereternity/pseuds/bittereternity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They will tell her that she's saving Sherlock everyday. She won't tell them that <i>he's </i> the one saving her, instead. She won't tell them that he's saving her every time he makes her laugh or makes her want to pull her hair out or tries to get her eyes to light up at a crime scene. She won't tell anyone these things, but they will all be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your heaven's trying everything (to break me down)

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this after the first episode. Yeah, no, seriously. I kept changing things about it until I realized that I'm probably never going to be able to stop changing it until I post it. So I finally did! I would say I'm very new to the fandom except the fandom is new-ish so I hope I've made it in good time. <3

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed – because “Thou mayest”. 

_East of Eden,_ John Steinbeck

*

Her hands are the first things about her to change.

She comes out of the operating room and her gloves are bloody and her scrubs are flecked with blood and her hair is moist from sweating and sticking to the sides of her face.

Half-angry and still unable to process what just happened, she peels off her gloves and throws them in the dustbin and that’s when she sees it. Sees them.

Her hands.

The first thing she thinks is that she _really_ needs to file her nails more often, and that’s when she sees it. The fingers on her left hand shiver just the little bit and her fingers keep touching in a physiological effort to control their rapid movement.

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and clenches her hand hard enough to leave crescent marks on the underside of her palm.

*

There is a morbidity and mortality conference soon after. They come to the conclusion that she’s made the right choice throughout. She keeps her mouth shut and keeps a black dress in her locker.

At the funeral, she meets the family and tells them that she’s sorry, _so sorry_ and they clasp her shoulder and hug her and tell her that she did everything she could. They hug her like it’s her grief they've come to mourn.

They tell her she was excellent under duress, maintained perfect composure and she wants to snap, explode, _shout_ at them that composure is a poor return for a lost life. Instead, she pinches the bridge of her nose to ward off an impending headache.

She says: “I quit.” She signs on her resignation letter and her hand is firm, composed, doesn't shake.

Someone says, “ _Joan,”_ and tries to pull her back but she doesn’t look back. She walks out of the gates of the hospital and lets go of life with her own hands.

She walks out of the hospital and into an abyss and into the darkness and her hands are firm at her sides, unclenches, unwavering, strong in their belief. She walks out and in the abyss of her future, sees the light.

*

Sherlock looks at her like she’s a puzzle.

He rakes his eyes over her and intimidates and dismisses her in a single instant. It’s exhilarating. It’s the most challenged she’s felt in a long time.

He takes her out to a new world, introduces her to the world he has made _his_ and she sees his eyes light up at the sight of a mystery, _any_ mystery. She almost sees his brain processing thousand different things every second, sees the way he takes in, _absorbs_ everything and becomes a part of his own process.

His eyes are red-rimmed from lack of sleep and his hands shake from the after-effects of his withdrawal and he can never get his brain to shut off but he looks at the world like it’s his playground, like it’s waiting for him to come over and make it beautiful and he steps forward and _observes_ the obvious hidden in every darkness and makes music out of a seemingly nonexistent vaccum.

He turns back and sees her. “Watson?” he asks, and offers her a chance to come forward, be a part of his song.

*

Here’s the thing no one understands about her choice to be a sober companion: the reason she’s so good is because she knows what being an addict feels like. It’s the same reason sponsors are generally recovering addicts; you only earn the right to break someone’s habit when you know what it’s like to make it in the first place.

She remembers, in spite of everything. She _remembers_ the rush of adrenaline coursing through her every time she put on her surgical gloves, the effortless way her mind cleared when she would look down at the patient lying in front of her, the way her hands would never shake when she held the scalpel and made the first cut.

 _Surgeon’s hands,_ Sherlock had said, and he had been right except it’s not something she’s been born with, it had taken years of failed relationships and infinite cups of coffee and sleepless nights and wrinkles and one day, _one day_ she had saved her first life.

Here’s the thing about addiction: drugs aren't defined by simple chemistry. Drugs don’t need to be tangible, physical for them to create an addiction.

And sometimes she lies in bed with a book and listens to Sherlock rapidly change the volumes on the multitude of televisions or hears him pacing abruptly and she thinks that _that_ was the problem in the first place, that at the best times of her life, she tried to be a God she didn’t believe in.

*

Sherlock says: “I deduce.”

Two words and he expands her world, stretches it further than she’s ever thought possible.

He looks at her and points out things she’s missed, things that were right in front of her that she’s just taken for granted, and it’s like she’s a child taking her first steps and learning to see everything around her for the first time.

Sometimes she’s afraid she will fall any second except Sherlock is there, _always_ annoyingly there behind her, catching her, helping her, making her _see._ His eyes, for all its contempt and mockery at the world in general, hold none of those things for her; they don’t judge and they are patient and wait for her to stop faltering.

*

\-- and she would _remember,_ you see, she would remember the feel of having a life in her own hands and the incredible sense of euphoria at being able to face a family and inform that their loved ones are _alive_ and well and –

she would look down at her hands, sometimes, just _sometimes_ in bed while Sherlock is blaring music downstairs in five languages, and she would look at her hands and the see the faintest of tremors go through them and she would _twist_ her hands in the sheet surrounding her and not let go for a long, long time.

*

They will tell her that she’s saving Sherlock every day.

Sometimes not out loud, but it will always be in their eyes and she sees the same expression of Captain Gregson’s face, and on the faces of several people Sherlock calls _acquaintances._ They will all tell her that she’s saving him, making him better, faster, more human.

She won’t tell them that _he’s_ the one saving her instead. She won’t tell them that he’s saving her every time he makes her laugh or makes her want to pull her hair out or tries to get her eyes to light up at a crime scene. She won’t tell anyone these things, but they will all be true.

*

He tells her the truth.

Every minute of every day in every way possible, he tells her the truth of everything except himself. Tells her that seeing things in puzzles and trying to solve them is really a one-way ticket to cynicism and solitude. He tell her that he _deduces_ and puts himself in front of her, shields her, tells her _look at me, look at what this has made me into._

And it doesn't matter, not to her, because her hands stop shaking and adrenaline rushes through her body once again and she finds reasons to look forward to her life in the morning. Remember this: she has always been good at replacing one addiction with another, anyway.

Sherlock looks at her, looks at her and gives her a free pass to his own version of humanity, tries and attempts to let her in when he hasn’t allowed anyone in this far. Sherlock looks at her and asks: _are you coming._

And over and over again, she finds herself unable to say no.

So she does what she can. She nods a _yes_ and smiles at his approval.

*


End file.
